Writing workshop in a PYP Classroom

Moving on from personal narratives, the students of Grade 6 have started a new type of writing: The information genre and their big topic is all about Teen Activism. This gives us the perfect opportunity to address one aspect of our unit on "Governance" which focuses on citizens and their complex often volatile relationship with the government!

Brainstorming

The students started by looking at the structure of an essay. The big message here is that "structure sets you free".

If you are able to chisel out a clear message through structure, then writing an essay becomes simple.

Brainstorming sessions are vital yet many students think they can get away with it.

And this is what happens when you try to...

One huge paragraph where the main ideas are submerged and left to the reader to figure out

or ...

As you can see, there is no clear topic sentence here.

And so a 5-minute mini-lesson/mid-writing workshop...

Listening carefully and following instructions during the mini-lessons also sets you free. This was evident in the workbooks of many students who set about creating a clear structure. Students quickly went back to their seats to highlight their topic sentences.

Those who brainstormed clearly had an easier time drafting their essay.

Once the skeleton structure was completed and out of the way, the students had to gather all their notes and try and add examples, anecdotes, quotes to support their ideas. Many students realised they should have deepened their research and cited more examples to support their ideas. So they set themselves homework, where they would find more articles in order to consolidate their main ideas.

Here are some examples of essays where the students managed to get a clear message across.

In the next one, her peer editor does a pretty good job with feedback!

At this point, students were asked to find a topic they were really interested in, and to do this, they had to generate ideas following the Trail of Research strategy, which looks something like this:

Once they create a trail of research, they meet in their writing groups to talk about their ideas.

This Bullying Group gets too excited about their topic and their brainstorm loses focus; they eventually get back to the drawing board.

Once done...they create the content page after having seen some great samples from the library.

This is what one group comes up with after a lot of discussion and debate.

The students are all set to go deeper with their research and specialize in one area.

This blog will be updated the week after next so please stay tuned!

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